Shattered Kingdoms

Heres the concern I have with this new scaling of punishments. When I first got dragged in to SK by Peso and Coya back in 97 or 98 my first character was a human paladin because I thought it would be a fun character concept to play after having it explained to me by Coya and Peso.

So, with their help, I managed to level my character to initiate and I hit a brick wall in my levelling. I asked around at that point where to go and was directed towards Morea and was even shown how to get there by a player that was nice enough to take pity on me as I was clearly new. Being poorly equipped and my character having a TERRIBLE build I ended up getting killed by a rat or some other low level NPC. There was a priest that took pity on me and would spam rez me every time I would die and I think I probably died 4 or 5 times to the same NPC until someone was nice enough to offer to help me get my corpse back and show me the area.

Happily I obliged and ran off with the giant to get my corpse and upon arrival to my corpse I was transferred to hell and hit with an immediate curse. I couldn't understand for the life of me why it was "Bad RP" for me to join groups with the giant until the IMM involved explained to me that the giant was a dark aura and it was bad RP for paladins to be in groups with evil characters. I was then transferred back to Exile where I immediately deleted my character and quit SK for about 2 months because I thought at the time that being "cursed by the gods" was pretty much a life ending experience for a character.

With the new scaling of punishments I would hope that the staff is kept to a stricter standard on how the curses are applied because while it is intended to target the "veterans" of SK such as myself that don't have problems overcoming those obstacles I really don't know that if I was a new player I would stay to a game that I just lost a full level for something as minor as what occured on my first character.

- Mitch

damn, missed it

Yeah, that IMM definitely screwed up. It seems to me that the current IMMstaff has a much more level head.

I guess what I'm hoping is that some statement will be made as to what offenses are deemed "cursable" considering the severity of curses now. Also perhaps scaling up the experience granted with enlights to be similar in size would make it seem less like an attempt to purposely drive people away from the game.

I dunno, a full-level an enlight, at minimum? That's a lot. I think the notion is to make people want to get lots of enlights, and not get any curses.

Well, that's the idea sure. But [REDACTED] everything about playing a game where some a-hole on a powertrip who got out on the wrong side of his bed this morning docks me a full level for having a silly/funny description in an otherwise thoroughly depressing game.

:edit: Also reddit is currently down for emergency maintenance, so I'll be out of your collective hair as soon as I can take my :badposting: somewhere else.

It's just a really bad time to be mundufisen or syn, is all.

I think mund got docked a full level once for using the term "pissed off" icly. Then he was like "what the [REDACTED] that's ridiculous," and the IMM was like "That's another level right there, john." And then mund was like, "You are really creepy," and deleted.

Some players are also permanently stalked by the IMMs. You don't even have to use the pray command if you're in the same room as syn. You can just use the say command.

I dunno, this just seems like an overreaction from JvJ. I might be wrong, but I think the IMMstaff is pretty solid at the moment, and if they notice a new player doing something stupid they're much more likely to correct him without a curse. Everything that I've seen from the IMMs recently makes me think that this new change will only affect those who are knowingly breaking the rules, and it shouldn't be directed towards those who are new and just learning the ropes, or those who aren't hurting the game with their actions.

As far as I can tell I think that my recent characters were stalked to a pretty solid degree too, though not as much as Syn and Mundufisen. I will say that Mundy probably earns way more curses than he gets even then.

I have never personally been mistreated by anyone on the IMMstaff. Honestly, though, I ate a curse once because both Aldric and Dago needed a container. While playing Aldric I located for a cloak of wind and fire and one was NOT available. Then with Dago I went to check the area, and the cloak still wasn't available. I got cursed a couple ticks of xp for that and now apparently it would cost me a full level. I didn't complain at the time but if I were docked a full level for something like that (still no idea how this counts as a rules violation), I'd definitely be ticked.

Personally I think the whole change was a massive overreaction.